I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was 16 years old. I started investing and playing poker when I was 17 years old. One day I skipped school because I bought warrants for 1 200 USD and I wanted to monitor the situation. Within 3 hours I made $5 000. I sold it quickly and went to school. During a sociology class in high school, I played heads up for $1 000. I lost, but it was fun, and my friends were watching. I know about the “urge” to earn money quick. It gives a kick; your adrenaline starts pumping through your veins. It becomes an addiction. It even get’s fun to lose money. This is very dangerous.

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I must admit that I see a lot of the same “rookies” in our community on Workplace. My guess is that many of our members are chasing profits on a daily basis and get kicks out of watching the prices move up and down. I cannot blame them either, as I was, and probably is, like that myself. I’ve always been impatient. It has been both a blessing and a curse. It has made me a lot of money, it has made me lose more money, it has made me miss huge gains and I’ve been struggling with FOMO (fear of missing out).

Humans aren’t wired to trade

I believe that humans aren’t made to trade. It’s not something we have in our DNA. It is something we must learn how to do, and how to disconnect our human emotions. People that lose a trade tend to risk more on the second trade to earn back what they already lost and then some. It’s a far too common mistake, which I have done myself many times. You have to be able to disconnect your emotions and to follow a strict strategy that you stick to no matter what. You are allowed to change your strategy and tactics, but that should not be something you do daily.

My biggest mistake?

I sold all my bitcoins (800) in 2015 when they were at their lowest (200 USD). I made a lot of money on trading cryptocurrencies, but I was too obsessed with it. I was watching the charts daily (like most of you are doing now). And when the prices started to gain traction in 2016, you can believe I felt an intense FOMO. However, I had decided not to go back in as I wouldn’t want to become obsessed with the charts once again. If I had invested my bitcoins in ethereum in 2015, I would have had more than 50 000 000 million USD today. Chew on that for a few seconds.

But I’ve realized that I didn’t need to watch the charts on a daily basis. I could simply have told myself that: “I want to hold these bitcoins for three years no matter what.” Or that I wanted to buy ethereum for all my bitcoins and then leave them for four years or more. Then I would be able to disconnect myself from the daily charts and probably have reached “financial freedom” by the age of 26.

As you might imagine, it has been hard to see that your prediction back in 2014 and 2015 came through, bitcoin reached 3000 USD, and ethereum is killing it. I’ve been working with myself on getting over the fact that I could have made 50 000 000 USD. What comforts me is that these opportunities happen all the time. I know there’s thousands of investors that have experienced the same. Not only with cryptocurrencies, but with stocks (look at Tesla), commodities and so forth.

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You don’t earn money; you steal money

Another interesting aspect of trading and investing is that you are not making money on good trades or investments. You are taking money from other traders and investors. The price of bitcoin is purely based on supply and demand. I bet you can find a person that wants to sell you a bitcoin for 10 000 USD, if you buy that bitcoin then it is worth 10 000 USD. But you have to be able to sell it again to capitalize on the asset.

What I’ve learned

The most important lesson I can teach you is to have patience.

HPS! (Have Patience Stupid!)

Create a strategy that you think will win, and stick to it. Don’t be obsessed and follow the charts minute by minute, it will only drive you crazy. When I talk about patience, it could be one-year horizon or even a ten-years horizon. Not a daily horizon. We have a famous saying in Norway:

TTT (Ting tar tid = Things take time)

Members ask me why we don’t have more trading recommendations on hacked.com. We could make tens of thousands of trading recommendations every day, but how good would they be? Opportunities in the market aren’t something that appears on demand. We do not want to give our members recommendations that are destined to fail. As I’ve explained previously; never lose money.

What I’m doing now

I’ve managed to distance myself from being obsessed with trading, whether it’s trading cryptocurrencies or CFDs on IG (e.g.). It has made me more happier, more comfortable and less stressed. That is an important factor to take into account for creating a good life.

I’m more experienced, more patient, more intelligent. I’ve learned the hard way, and you should learn from what I’ve done (and not done). Now I’m only focusing on the following:

Increase my monthly income

Invest 33% of my monthly income in different assets (see the 33% club)

Reduce stressful projects and schemes

Spend more time with family and friends (still working on this)

Start working out and eat healthier (still working on this)

Since I stopped trading on a daily basis, I’ve become a lot happier and satisfied with my life. I was able to take a breather and shift my focus. Hacked.com and its community is a direct outcome of my shift in focus. And I’m glad that so many members enjoy our information and that I can at least help a few people to avoid the same mistakes I’ve made.

When that is said, I’m not saying it’s bad to day trade, but you need to follow a strict strategy that you stick to and not let your human emotions decide for you. I will most likely return to day trading when I get more time, but I’ll do it differently next time.

In this article I talk mostly about trading and investing, but the same rules can be applied to entrepreneurship and starting your own business. Patience is as important here.

Posted on 1:28 pm June 18, 2017.

Posted on 1:46 pm June 18, 2017.

Great insight Jonas. I held on to my ltc (based on your community recommendation) even when it was dead for a while. I had thoughts in between to sell it and move on, but I stayed put because I was curious to see where it would be in a month, and thankfully now it paid off. Well said Jonas! It’s all about patience and not having the herd mentality. I usually trade with 24 hour charts with oversold and overbought conditions and that gives me peace of mind not having to stare at the chart for hours. It gives sufficient time to react eventhough we may miss the absolute tops and bottoms!

Posted on 12:35 am June 19, 2017.

Am I just too much of a newbie? I love looking at charts every day, it’s so much fun. And I made more money last month than all of last year. I find day trading more predictable, less risky and much more fun than what I was doing before: running a fashion company. That was incredibly stressful and with little reward. Because of the fashion timeline, I was investing hundreds of thousands of dollars for a potential return that may or not may come 8-10 months ahead of time. For my last two seasons, I started a new brand direction that I knew was right for the collection – it cost my business 30% of our revenues. Without the cash reserves from my business partner’s investment, we would have gone under.

There’s a lot I miss about having my own fashion brand but overall with day trading I am happier and more certain about my financial future.

Fyi, I transfer all my profits on a daily basis. Also, I check the charts at 3-4x a day now, at high points and low points. If it’s an exciting day then I check more often. Working pretty well so far…

Posted on 2:53 pm June 19, 2017.

Posted on 2:00 am June 20, 2017.

Haha, omg, I laughed out loud about “one in a million.” I seriously doubt it. Most of the time I have no idea what’s going on with the charts or the prices. It’s just this is the funnest thing I’ve ever done to make money (btw, I’ve lost a lot of money too…). I loved designing lingerie but sometimes the thought of outputting more products into this world made with toxic processes was just too much. Plus, I like the energy of cryptos and everything this world stands for.

Posted on 7:46 am June 20, 2017.

good reading. im just in the “starting” phase of cryptocurrency trading myself. Think i’ve probably done my fair share of the rookie mistakes already, emotions, fear of missing out, waking up waay early to check the charts. And feeling and immense impatience when seing negative numbers, to quickly sell.
now the last week ive stressed out a hell of a lot less, and just put in a few high sale orders, to make sure not to miss the pumps/whales roaming the altcoins lately. and slowly and a little more steady, ive almost recovered my loss in 1 week. So now i’m going for more mid-long term with about 75% of it. and using only 25% for day to day fun trading.
this subscripiton to this page, has already paid itself 🙂

Posted on 11:38 pm June 24, 2017.

Two days ago I had some change in a trading account, invested it all into something that had a lot of value, drunkenly, which I had no other information about. Then I put it for sale at 300% the cost, and four days later discovered I had profited. I took these profits, converted them to dogecoin, and further gambled that (dice, bitsler) up another 1000%, pushed it back into the trading account, converted it to .25 bitcoins. I had a lot of fun but I’m fully aware it hardly ever works this way. Patience is important, and I lack it more than most. I’d be a billionaire if I had the patience I desire to have, as you would be a mult-millionaire.

Dmitriy Lavrov is a professional trader, technical analyst and money manager with 10 years of trading experience. He covers Forex, Commodities and Cryptocurrencies. He is among the top 10 most Read More

Jonas Borchgrevink

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Jonas Borchgrevink is the founder of Hacked.com and CryptoCoinsNews.com. He is a serial entrepreneur, trader and investor. He shares his own personal journey on Hacked.com. // -- Discuss and ask Read More

P.H. Madore

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P. H. Madore lives in Arkansas with his wife and children. He has covered the cryptocurrency beat over the course of hundreds of articles for Hacked’s sister site, CryptoCoinsNews, as Read More

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Trader and financial analyst, with 10 years of experience in the field. An expert in technical analysis and risk management, but also an avid practitioner of value investment and passive Read More

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Rakesh Upadhyay is a Technical Analyst and Portfolio Consultant for The Summit Group. He has more than a decade of experience as a private trader. His philosophy is to use Read More

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